Law Commons^™

Breaking The Genuine Link: The Contemporary International Legal Regulation Of Nationality, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of nationality traditionally mediated the relationship between the individual and the state in a bygone era in which international law regarded only the latter as a genuine subject of the law; today, its international legal functions have expanded. Yet, as in the past, it remains unclear whether and how international law limits the otherwise almost plenary competence of states to confer their nationality by their internal laws in a way entitled to international recognition. After the International Court of Justice's ("ICJ") 1955 judgment in Nottebohm, however, lawyers began to express this limit with a kind of doctrinal mantra: …